North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visits a mushroom farm in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency on July 16.北韓中央通信社七月十六日發布的一張未標日期的照片，是北韓領導人金正恩參觀蘑菇農場的照片。

Photo: Reuters照片：路透

The leader of North Korea apparently has learned a lesson from Hollywood – image is everything.

The man known to the Western world as running a country that starves its population and menaces neighboring countries with nuclear weapons program is a rock star, a photo released by North Korea’s Central News Agency would have you believe.

More like US rapper Lil’ Kim than Kim Jong Un, the picture shows the leader mobbed by workers at a mushroom farm. From the looks of it, the leader is loved by his people.

Dressed in dark shirt and pants, the 29-year-old stands in the middle of a crowd of women wearing immaculate white jumpsuits, with some grabbing his arms and others who appear to be weeping.

Is it staged? Reuters, which distributed the photo, notes that it is unable to “independently verify the authenticity, content, location, or date of this image.”